U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums - Blogs - Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton by jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?26-Vlog-the-Inhaler-or-The-Occasional-Video-Blog-Musings-of-Jim-Thornton U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums en Sat, 25 May 2013 05:19:45 GMT vBulletin 60 http://forums.usms.org/images/misc/rss.jpg U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums - Blogs - Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton by jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?26-Vlog-the-Inhaler-or-The-Occasional-Video-Blog-Musings-of-Jim-Thornton <![CDATA[Getting De-All'd]]> http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26823-Getting-De-All-d Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:26:59 GMT If you have ever been the victim of rule-mongering bureaucracy run amuk, and would like some misery to provide you a little company, grab a shawl and... If you have ever been the victim of rule-mongering bureaucracy run amuk, and would like some misery to provide you a little company, grab a shawl and settle in for the blood-boiling pleasures of my most recent experience at the hands of our beloved "We do it all for the swimmers" organization!

Yes, my swimming comrades! I have been officially De-All Americanized five weeks after the Top 10 listings became official!

http://byjimthornton.com/2013/01/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-an-all-american/ ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26823-Getting-De-All-d Preamble to a Catalog of Woe http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26610-Preamble-to-a-Catalog-of-Woe Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:49:11 GMT http://byjimthornton.com/2013/01/11/preamble-to-a-catalog-of-woe/ http://byjimthornton.com/2013/01/11/...atalog-of-woe/ ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26610-Preamble-to-a-Catalog-of-Woe Merry Christmas from Me and My Dicksons! http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26271-Merry-Christmas-from-Me-and-My-Dicksons! Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:14:56 GMT Another year has come and is almost gone.

Here, my swimming friends across the globe, is this year's Christmas card and Big Present to each and every one of you!

Don't feel obligated to give me anything in return. It is enough that you allow me to warm my cockles by being beneficiaries of my generosity, for truly, 'tis better to give than receive!

Click below link to receive your card and gift!



Click above link to receive your card and gift!

Suggestion: Why not fire up your Big Present during Christmas dinner so the entire family can listen to it right after Grace?

:turkey:

 ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26271-Merry-Christmas-from-Me-and-My-Dicksons! <![CDATA[I'm No. 1! Plus, Hudson, OHIO, IM results]]> http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26232-I-m-No-1!-Plus-Hudson-OHIO-IM-results Thu, 20 Dec 2012 03:42:34 GMT No. 1, that is, in the 60-64 men's 100 LCM freestyle and the Boys and Girls 10-and-Under National Age Group record books! (Assuming I could pass for 10-and-Under in either gender category, which would involve a doctor's note attesting to a diagnosis of progeria and indeterminate sexual organs. Frankly, this shouldn't be all that difficult to secure.)

Anyhow, to read more about this unbelievable triumph of mediocrity over reason, I invite you to click here http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/18/random-inventory/ to be whisked instantly to a world of fantastical swimming enchantment...

PS 5:45.80 and 2:39.94 in the 400 SCM and 200 SCM IM's respectively, this despite coming to a virtual standstill in the respective breaststroke legs of each race. A race dissection of the 400 comparing my splits to the current No. 1 Event Rankings placement holder, the legendary walrus-mustachioed Jim Clemmons, is also added to the link aformentioned above.

Click, whisk, enchant! ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26232-I-m-No-1!-Plus-Hudson-OHIO-IM-results The Big Snake Project http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26028-The-Big-Snake-Project Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:18:17 GMT I suspect I am fast reaching a point of diminishing, perhaps vanishing, returns with this cross-platform monetization optimizing paradigm here. ... I suspect I am fast reaching a point of diminishing, perhaps vanishing, returns with this cross-platform monetization optimizing paradigm here.

However, I am confident today's entry shall turn things around entirely!

If you are swimming in a SCM this weekend, more reason than ever to click on the Big Snake Project for a turbocharging of energy levels!



http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/07/...snake-project/

Have an enjoyable weekend!

Off tomorrow to swim the 400 IM, the 200 IM, and possibly, if I am still able to move, the 800 freestyle in a SCM high school pool in Hudson, Ohio.

Embarrassing results to be posted here next week! ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26028-The-Big-Snake-Project My Chief Technology Officer http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26006-My-Chief-Technology-Officer Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:13:49 GMT Meet the staff! http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/05/meet-liam-white-mcshane-12-chief-technology-officer/ ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?26006-My-Chief-Technology-Officer My Rudder http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25972-My-Rudder Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:41:46 GMT Okay, so maybe today's blog entry is not 100 percent, entirely swimming-related the way yesterday's was.

On the other hand, it is on a subject that roughly half the USMS swimming population owns, and--at least according to Sigmund Freud--roughly the other half wishes they owned.

Which reminds me of the classic old joke, wherein a little boy and a little girl are playing doctor.

The little boy points at his nether regions and sneers, "Na na na na naaaaa na! I have one of these and you don't!"

The little girl just shakes her head wisely, points to her nether regions, and replies, "With one of these, I can get as many of those as I want!"

Which to me remains the most convincing of all arguments that Freud's notion of penis envy just doesn't pass the real world test.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy[/ame]


In any event, for today's reading and viewing pleasure, I present to the greater USMS diaspora an in-depth meditation on the nature of my rudder:

http://byjimthornton.com/2012/09/22/...the-squeamish/

Note: click on the above, not the picture, which will take you nowhere.



Note: I am pretty sure that the bugs have been more or less worked out of the RSS feed thingy, making it even easier than ever to subscribe, absolutely for free, to my new blog!

Though for those who can't figure out how to do so, I shall continue my quest to create infinite loops between hither http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?u=26 and thither http://byjimthornton.com/


PS I signed up for the 400 and 200 IM and the 800 freestyle at the Hudson, Ohio SCM meet next Saturday. I shall keep you posted.

 ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25972-My-Rudder Criss Cross Chicane! http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25948-Criss-Cross-Chicane! Mon, 03 Dec 2012 21:49:02 GMT Today, an actual and fully *swimming-related *blog complete with partial *race results* and the kind of *trash talking *that gives anyone beyond 38... Today, an actual and fully swimming-related blog complete with partial race results and the kind of trash talking that gives anyone beyond 38 hope!

Simply click on this link to be whisked immediately to a world of utter swimming enchantment! Can't wait? Click now! http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/03/...t-ruminations/

Bonus: includes two of my Sewickley teammates/Kona World Champion Triathlon competitors modeling actual underwear.

Real people! Real underwear! Real trash talk! Right here! Right now! http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/03/...t-ruminations/

Still waiting? Okay, now click! You've made your point! No sense belaboring it! http://byjimthornton.com/2012/12/03/...t-ruminations/

Really! ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25948-Criss-Cross-Chicane! Vlog Aggregator for byJimThornton.com!!!! http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25903-Vlog-Aggregator-for-byJimThornton-com!!!! Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:40:38 GMT Great news, everyone! And just in time for the free gift-giving season! My USMS swimming vlog, the No. 1 Internet source of news about Jim... Great news, everyone! And just in time for the free gift-giving season!

My USMS swimming vlog, the No. 1 Internet source of news about Jim Thornton's somewhat-related-to-swimming stream-of-consciousness ramblings, is now going to serve a second and arguably even more important raison d'etre:

Driving traffic to my neonatal blog, http://byjimthornton.com/


The Vlog will, in other words, now serve as a "news aggregator" for the blog, and vice versa. I would explain what this means if I understood it myself, but I don't have a clue. In fact, I am just throwing around words like "news aggregator" in the hopes that they might apply to what I am doing. In any event, whatever it is I am attempting here, I am pretty sure it will work in some capacity or other, without causing the global Internet to crash under the sheet massiveness of my daily drivel.

Emphasis on the pretty.

In any event, my new blog, http://byjimthornton.com/, not to be confused with this current vlog, http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?u=26, will feature some unbelievably enchanting unique content including:

* Actual .pdf's of some of my magazine articles written over the years. These, unlike most of my vlogs 'n blogs, have actually useful information in them! You can learn, for instance, how to shorten the pain of heartbreak, determine your zygosity if you are a twin, and subscribe via RSS feed technology to http://byjimthornton.com/. And so many more useful things, too!


Visitors to http://byjimthornton.com/ will be able to effortless click to view and/or save for your permanent electronic library charming and frequently award-winning articles such as the above (which won the 1992 Gold Medal Award for Best Article of the Year, The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE)!


* Actual cartoon novellas drawn and written by me both now in my senescence and during my juvenilia days--watch a mind develop and decay all at a single one-stop site!


A snippet from the entirely viewable online and/or downloadable for permanent library inclusion of the ongoing cartoon autobiography: Jim! Up Through Screamer.


* The Thornton Twins Podcast, not yet up, but which should be up very soon--perfect for downloading to your smartphone and playing either late at night when you need a cure for insomnia, or behind the wheel when you need to stave off grogginess and evade vehicular misadventure!


Women of a certain vintage who have long fantasized about a dalliance with twins are free to stoke said fantasies while listening to the Thornton twins discuss the leading issues of the day in their deeply resonant male voices that only occasionally squeak!

Go ahead! We do not mind being fodder for your fantasies, though if you have ever been diagnosed with erotomania (ero·to·ma·nia/ (-ma´ne-ah) 1. a type of delusional disorder in which the subject harbors a delusion that a particular person is deeply in love with them; lack of response is rationalized, and pursuit and harassment may occur), please know that John and I are not what we appear to be in this handsome picture from our younger days, but rather are constipated old cranks riddled with disgusting personal habits and you would be much better off fixating on these twins instead:


Okay. I know what you're thinking. "Jim, you had me at 'Great news!' What do I need to do to make it incredibly simple to follow your new blog, http://byjimthornton.com/, on the Internet? To be honest, I am not that technologically savvy."

First of all, don't be ashamed! I, too, am not that technologically savvy. And figuring out how to make things as easy and enjoyable as humanly possible for anybody on earth to find and follow me remains an ongoing challenge.

But here is what I recommend for now, at least:

1. Check out this blog entry first, http://byjimthornton.com/2012/11/29/...ckerberg-weep/, which will explain how to use RSS feed technology to automatically funnel any new entries into your "reader"--and I even provide links to some good, free readers for those of you who, like me, don't know what "readers" are. Note: there remain some bugs in the system, so please be patient with the RSS feeding/reader thing! Eventually, it will all go swimmingly.

2. Click on this link next for an easy-to-scroll compendium of the blogs so far posted http://byjimthornton.com/all-posts/ so that you can read each one at your leisure, clicking away with abandon at all the little buttons at the bottom of each entry (share with Facebook, Twitter, G+, email, and the like.)

Thanks ever so much, my friends! In the month or so I have been working on http://byjimthornton.com/, I have already managed to "earn" $6.50 in eye ball views, assuming some of these aren't later deemed fraudulent! Once the new blog accumulates $100 worth of non-fraudulent eyeball view-based revenue, which I estimate will occur sometime in the third quarter of 2017, I shall cut a check to my Chief Technology Officer, Liam White, for 10 percent of the amount, and use the remainder to buy premium catfood for a much deserved family celebration!

And you will all be invited! ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25903-Vlog-Aggregator-for-byJimThornton-com!!!! Of Dots, Gluttony, and Muskrats http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25822-Of-Dots-Gluttony-and-Muskrats Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:42:00 GMT First of all, a very belated Happy Thanksgiving 2012 for all my viewers:


I ate, of course, the Traditional American Thanksgiving Feed on Thursday, followed by the Traditional American Thanksgiving Leftover Feed the moment I woke up for breakfast on Black Friday.

And the gluttony has not taken more than a few moments rest ever since.

I am becoming a bloated monstrosity.

Last night, for example, I went to the local Bottom Dollar store and found a good price on center cut pork chops. The smallest package I could find, unfortunately, contained four of these beauties. I do not like leftovers when it comes to the other white meat, so I grilled and ate four of these:


and washed them down with some fizzy water and a whole avacado. Then I went to see Skyfall with my teammate Ben Mayhew and Liam White, son of our other teammate, Bill White. Liam is a boy genius and computer wizard about whom I will soon be writing more TERRIBLY EXCITING SWIMMING TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS LIKELY TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY YOU WASTE TIME ON YOUR SMART PHONE!!!

Anyhow, at the movie theater, I purchased a box of Dots:


in the only size available. I gave Liam most, though I concede, not all of the green ones, and ate the rest of the Dots myself.

Thanks to the way they calculate grams of sugar on the size of the box, it seemed at first that perhaps I had not done myself too much diabetes-inducing damage. But then I realized that they were talking about grams of sugar per serving, of which there were actually five servings in the box.

Bottom line: as a chaser to my four grilled porkers and avocado, and as a prelude to my later beers and Klondike bar, I had inadvertently consumed 105 grams of sugar, somewhat more than the 25 grams per day recommended for men.

I will leave unspecified my breakfast and lunch preceding the Pork-Avacado-Dots main meal of the day, but suffice it to say, I didn't starve myself.

All of which circles me back to why this has relevance to my swimming and, for that matter, the Archimedes Principle.

To wit, I am becoming so bloated with fat and plumptitude that I greatly fear my recent swimming accomplishment (i.e., that first ever individual All American rating: still not absolutely guaranteed, but looking ever more cautiously optimistic as Dec. 1 hustles towards us!) might be my last one.

Partly because I must move so much additional fat-weight through the water.

And partly because the sheer bulk of me is displacing so much water from the pool itself that there might not be enough left to actually swim in.

All of which further circles me back to my Happy Thanksgiving card, photoshopped by my friend, Bill Robertson, who years and years ago similarly photoshopped a picture of me grilling a monkey in the jungle for use as my annual Christmas card. (Do not worry! I shall post this when the time is right!)

Anyhow, the creature I appear to be eating in my Happy Thanksgiving card is a muskrat, trapped and skinned by Dan E., a carpenter who does a lot of work for my wife and me at out Bed & Breakfast in Western, PA:


It occurred to me that maybe I could shed a few pounds if I went on the Modern Paleo Pittburger Diet™, eating only things like muskrats and pine cones that I can harvest on my own from the Western PA hinterlands.



Muskrat in water



Muskrat in truck



Muskrat in me belly
So far, unfortunately, I haven't managed to make the switch.

But looking at these last two pictures on a regular basis has helped put me at least slightly off my Traditional American Feed Diet.

And I hope, perchance, they will do the same for you!

If you get a chance, please check out my new actual blog, where I am hoping to slowly archive many of my published magazine stories over the years. There are already a couple entries up that have swimming articles available for free .pdf downloads:


I would be thrilled if any of you out there would consider "subscribing" via RSS to my new blog, known simply as ByJimThornton:


I'm hoping it might one day prove to be a poor man's pitiable pension plan, cranking out revenue via page view advertising in the neighborhood of $3.25 per month.

I am definitely going to need the money when the Modern Paleo Pittburger Diet™ inevitably fails and I end up--as we all know I shall--in The Nursing Home For Dot Addicted Fatties™. ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25822-Of-Dots-Gluttony-and-Muskrats <![CDATA[Jimmy Boo Boo Child's Possibly Premature Ejaculation]]> http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25582-Jimmy-Boo-Boo-Child-s-Possibly-Premature-Ejaculation Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:01:16 GMT


It begins!

All


All


All


All


All


All


All


ALL (FIRST EVER INDIVIDUAL) AMERICAN!!!!!?



:bliss:


!


Let's hope the above ejaculation does not prove premature, for the listings are still preliminary. My fingers have been crossed so long it looks like I have developed arthritis.

For those hoping to follow in my path to flukish glory in what the current edition of Swimmer calls "the premiere event in swimming, the 100 LCM freestyle", I say it is critical to have a good role model.

I will happily shoulder that burden for you, just as a little girl down 'Bama way has shouldered that burden for me!

Note: to see the movie, you need to click on this link. Clicking on the picture below the link won't do you any good.

I would also like to thank, in as public a way as possible, cinematographer and still photographer nonpareil, John Kuzmkowski.

How John has time to work on his artistry while simultaneously racking up the #2 position in Go The Distance is beyond me!

If I were a young girl, and I assure you I am not, I would find this combination of creativity and indefatigable endurance absolutely irresistible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM3wa...ican - YouTube

]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?25582-Jimmy-Boo-Boo-Child-s-Possibly-Premature-Ejaculation <![CDATA[Thornton's Life of Livingston: New Weight Training Ideas]]> http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?23888-Thornton-s-Life-of-Livingston-New-Weight-Training-Ideas Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:37:30 GMT I realize that Leslie "the Fortress" Livingston is a much beloved--no, make that a most beloved--swimmer in the pantheon of USMS greats.

By contrast, I am something of a minor non-entity/known irritant who uses his skills in the latter to win attention, be this mildly positive (yeah, right!) or somewhat negative ("The only thing worse than being talked about," suggested Oscar Wilde, "is not being talked about.")

To this end, one of the most successful strategies I have discovered over the years has been to Boswell myself to Leslie's Dr. Johnson by which I mean a relationship not entirely unlike the one enjoyed by a helminth in the digestive tract of his human host, only in a literary sense.



Might Necatur Americanus prove as similarly ameliorative to Leslie's gluten allergy as biographer James Thornton has proven to be in the documentation of her life? The answer in a future vlog (but here is a hint: Yes!)

As Wikipedia puts it about the exceptional Boswell-Johnson relationship:

Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) is a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson written by James Boswell. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre of biography; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English. While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject only began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. The biography takes many critical liberties with Johnson's life, as Boswell makes various changes to Johnson's quotations and even censors many comments. Regardless of these actions, modern biographers have found Boswell's biography as an important source of information.

As even a casual review of my vlog entries will convince you, Thornton's Life of Livingston is, in so many ways, my life's great project and metaphorical case of intestinal parasitism.

It is, I suspect, no accident that both Mr.'s Boswell and Thornton share the name James.

But why, one might reasonably ask, would we need to read Thornton's Life of Livingston when Leslie, through her own daily scribblings, is providing a perfectly detailed Livingston's Life of Livingston in her own right?

And while it is true that you can count on Leslie's own incredibly well-read blog, The FAF AFAP Digest, for the minutiae of her life as a swimmer--the yards doing this, the meters doing that, the equipment used here, the other equipment used there, the dry lands, the wet lands, the pilatic yogic positions, the cornu copiae of physical, psychological, hormonal, geo-political-spiritual miseries racked up as a consequence, and so forth--I maintain that to see the Big Picture of the Life Leslie (or La Vie de Livingston, as Proust might have put it), you really need to start reading Thornton's Life of Livingston much more carefully, more often, and with many, many, many more comments left in the comments section.

At the risk of seeming impertinent, Leslie is much too close to her subject to see the forest for the trees. Not so I!

Furthermore, like James Boswell, James Thornton has no impediment with "taking liberties" with the "facts" in order to better capture of the truth of Leslie's life, a truth, I might add, is likely to elude the dear girl herself.

For who among us can truly claim to know ourselves better than I know you, even those I have barely met?

With all this as preamble, let me cut to the chase here before I lose too many more of you dear readers, for I do sense a certain restlessness in the ether, a shuffling of papers, a clearing of phlegm from the throat, as if in preparation for saying the likes of, "Okay, well..." or "Gotta nuther call..." or "Shut the **** up, I can't stand to hear any more of this lunatic prattle!"

To wit:

Some of you may recall that one of my earliest "chapters" in Thornton's Life of Livingston was the classicly controversial vlog entry, Love Leslie, Hate Jim http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=8731.

This simply recapitulated the fan reaction to our ***-for-tat argument on the subject of the putative "benefits" of weight-lifting for swimmers that ran in Swimmer Magazine.

Leslie argued it is essential to do this in order to swim fast.

I argued that the literature said quite the opposite and that, moreover, it was dangerous.

I told you so: on the nature of an obnoxious, but not altogether unfactual, saying.

It appears that I have been correct, at least in the latter declaration, all the while, proving yet again that Thornton knows Livingston better than Livingston knows Livingston--yet another reason why Thornton's Life of Livingston should remain the number one literary destination for anybody with even a passing interest in Leslie, including most of all Leslie herself.

For this is what happened to the lass:

While once again attempting heavy weight lifting last week, Leslie heard something elastic snap in her elbow, triggering instant pain. In a text message, she wrote to me that perhaps she would stop heavy lifting forever, that she had, indeed, come around to my way of thinking: i.e., that it is a dangerous waste of time for swimmers!

Oh dear, further chase cutting, I now believe, has become a matter of survival. The audience for today's musings, I greatly fear, is dwindling faster than the Donner party!

Absolutely no more preamble then. For those intrepid few who have remained with us so far, there is a payoff--and a sizable one at that.

Thanks to Bill White's eagle eye, I am happy to propose a much safer couple of alternatives to classic heavy weight lifting that Leslie can take up instead.

Please check out these two regimens, one of which is great for the arms, and the other which will give even the flimsiest of us specimens the abs and core of Mr. Ryan Lochte himself (who will be appearing soon in an upcoming episode of the Vlog the Inhaler, AKA, Thornton's Life of Livingston and Lochte.)

(Note: many of you may be familiar with the first exercise regimen. The second one, however, which Bill brought to my attention yesterday, is likely to be completely novel to anyone who has not spent time incarcerated in North Korea. Don't miss it!)

Safe approach to arm strength training:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_541956.html

Safe approach to torso strength training:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/korea...rse-than-the-s ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?23888-Thornton-s-Life-of-Livingston-New-Weight-Training-Ideas Experiment in Pain http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?23384-Experiment-in-Pain Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:15:10 GMT The incredibly kind Anna Lea Matysek sent me this yesterday in response to my Facebook status, which read: After suffering a tear-inducing back... The incredibly kind Anna Lea Matysek sent me this yesterday in response to my Facebook status, which read:

After suffering a tear-inducing back spasm yesterday morning--four days before the Spire Institute swimming meet--and still suffering greatly from sciatica, pelvic girdle nerve pains, and agony in the lumbar regions--I have decided to try an experiment: I am not babying myself. I am Marquis de Sade-ing myself instead in the hopes this counterintuitive fix will allow me to swim this weekend. In the meantime, if any of my Facebook friends are secret heroin addicts with access to an abundant supply of the elixir AND a clean hypodermic needle, would you consider letting me know how much it would cost to get a little juice in the right spot?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all

Inspired by both Dr. Weinstein and my swimming coach/friend Bill White, who was swimming butterfly two weeks after a severe Grade 3 shoulder separation, I have decided to meet my fate somewhere near the shores of Lake Erie.

I shall keep you posted, perchance answering the question posed in this self-portrait by early next week.

The one thought that keeps me going is that if I somehow manage to paralyze myself while diving off the blocks, then at least the pain will go away.

--A fellow traveler for all the assorted USMS back pain sufferers, Jimmy.

]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?23384-Experiment-in-Pain <![CDATA[Leslie's Core: In Praise Of]]> http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?22854-Leslie-s-Core-In-Praise-Of Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:06:45 GMT After the Greensboro meet, during which I managed to beat everyone in attendance in the 200 freestyle who was also at least 59 years old, I decided... After the Greensboro meet, during which I managed to beat everyone in attendance in the 200 freestyle who was also at least 59 years old, I decided that it was time for me to take the next step.

That next step is to become more like Leslie.

I think I can say with 100 percent accuracy that our little Leslie, AKA, Leslie "The Fortress" Livingston, is not only a World Class Masters Swimmer but also the Patron Saint of Masters Swimmers Everywhere as well as Mither Nonpareil to a Quartet of Unbelievably Talented Athletic Youngsters: Zach, Ali, Gillian, and her favorite of all, Jimmy, the man child.

One of the keys to Leslie's swimming success, I believe, was her decision to embrace and excel at something most of us post-40 Masters never learned during our swimming youths: the SDK.

I was trying to recall the exact circumstances that caused Leslie to pursue excellence in this new "second fastest of all strokes"--and to put it into the pitiless vanquishment of her 50 and over female (and, honestly, male) competitors. (I can't begin to tell you how many chauvinistic men of a certain age were muttering in the Greensboro locker room that the 50 fly and 50 back have been forever ruined for them by Leslie's untouchable World Records! Besides me, there must have been at least one more embittered old jerk doing this.)

Leslie has told me more than once the inspirational story of how she came to devote herself to SDKs and the core strengthening this requires.

Alas, my memory is not what it used to be, and what it used to be wasn't all that great.

For the life of me, I just couldn't remember what this story was. So this morning I Googled "why Leslie decided in middle age to become the best 5' 3" to 5' 4" female SDKer in the world" (or words to that effect) and the following image popped up on my screen, bringing the whole episode back with such detail it was as if it had all just happened yesterday!



For those of you who may not know, Leslie was a stand-out distance swimmer at Dartmouth University, where she specialized in the 400 IM and 200 Butterfly.

She attended Dartmouth on a full scholarship because her great great great great great grandfather on her mother's side was a cousin to Jim Thorpe's great great great great uncle by marriage. As most of you know, Dartmouth was originally founded for Native Americans, who to this day are given preferential treatment in admissions process.

Not that this in any way made up for the savage racial taunts Leslie experienced from her Pale Face classmates. Indeed, for much of her freshman year, Leslie's only friend was her roommate and fellow part-Ojibway, Elizabeth Warren.



How mercilessly were Les and Liz teased for their high Indian cheekbones and somewhat shrill war cries! In one particularly cruel episode, Harvard boy, Mitford Romney (known to the Sioux and Ojibways at Dartmouth as Two Faced White Weasel Born of Multiple Mothers) lead a gang of privileged white country clubbers to the girls' dorm. As the frat boys held the comely squaws down, Two Faced White Weasel Born of Multiple Mothers pulled out an authentic tomahawk purchased for the occasion at a New Hampshire Stuckey's, held it high above his head, and yelled, "Now I'm a'gonna cut your Sacagawea's off!"

The next thing Leslie remembers was waking up at age 46, with four kids (the oldest of which she hadn't yet met), a bit of mid-life dysthymia, and a desire to get back into swimming shape. She started swimming at a pool near her house in suburban Washington, DC, where she had been practicing law, wifing, and living a completely unmemorable life for decades.

The coach suggested she might want to learn SDKs, and Leslie thought it was a good suggestion.

So she practiced, did exercises to strengthen her core muscles, and over the next four or five years became incredibly good at SDKs!

It's an amazing story, and I am sure that many of you will find it as inspiring as I have.

All of which is leading up to a set I accidentally stumbled upon while swimming a solo practice at the Sewickley YMCA pool last Thursday:

Easy 1000 warm up

Continuous 50s kick for as long as it takes, performed with a kick board but without fins in the following order--

First 50, all flutter kick.

Second 50, 1 dolphin kick off each wall, followed by the rest of each length flutter kick.

Third 50, 2 dolphin kicks per wall, followed by flutter.

Fourth 50, 3 dolphin kicks per wall and so forth....adding a single dolphin kick per length..

Until you kick the whole length only doing dolphin kicks.

In my case, I finally made it with 30 dolphin kicks per length, which brought this kick set to 1500 yards.

I finished up with some actual submerged dolphin kicks, swimming 25 yards length underwater (took me 28 kicks to do this.)

Then the normal cool down procedures.

I was pretty sure my back would be killing me the next day, but it didn't. DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness, kicked in two days later, but not in my back but rather my abs, which became very sore indeed. When I mentioned this to Bill, he said that the pain indicated I was probably doing the SDKs correctly.

Clearly, I'm far from ready to Venus de Milo my own abdominal regions the way Google has opted to do for World Record holder, Leslie. Nor am I prepared to put on a war bonnet and declare, via blood curdling whoops, my intention to raid the 60-64 Age Group.

My own great great grandparents were not related to a famous red Indian like Jim Thorpe but rather, I am fairly certain, derived from anonymous pastey-faced European mongrels, themselves beget during one of those frequent collective-horde "love fests" that is a chief reason evolutionary biology has driven human sperm counts to such Zarathustrian numbers!

Still, I do plan to continue my SDK practicing whenever I find myself solo in a lap lane! Unlike Leslie, I have never had much of a Sacagewea to count on. But as her own experience has so nicely shown us, it's never too late to grow one. ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?22854-Leslie-s-Core-In-Praise-Of Swimboy Pictorial http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?21717-Swimboy-Pictorial Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:03:47 GMT Leaving tomorrow to interview Mr. Lochte; hoping, upon return, for advice and commentary on this and that regarding hodge podge below: *Picture 1.... Leaving tomorrow to interview Mr. Lochte; hoping, upon return, for advice and commentary on this and that regarding hodge podge below:

Picture 1.




Note: this first picture is the only entirely swimming related-part of today's vlog, so readers who can respond with advice to the questions raised therein will be excused from continuing onwards into what, even I concede, is ultimately a dark place indeed beginning around Picture 5.


Picture 2.



Artists abound within our swimming ranks. At our recent Y championships at Clarion University, an incredibly affable swimmer named Mike Genz drew the following for my coach's 6-year-old daughter, Ciara. Mike was an animator for Disney till carpal tunnel forced him to take a break. He got a tenured position at Edinboro University teaching animation, and that's how he wound up in our hickish neck of the woods. While employed by Disney, he worked on numerous films. He did, for example, all of Ariel's sisters in The Little Mermaid, plus all the eels!

Picture 3.




Another great swimmer-illustrator is our very own D.B. "Doug" Dowd, who posts under the name Red60.

Picture 4.




Red it is! Anybody with an interest in graphic design and a wonderful way of bringing travel to life should contact Red for a copy of Spartan Holiday! You can send him a private message here: http://forums.usms.org/private.php?do=newpm&u=4764

Picture 5.



Hypothesis: you don't need to be talented to be a good artist. Example: I happened upon the following picture of myself and noticed that the bottom half of my upside down face had a certain science fiction quality that was more attractive, or at least more commanding, than the top half.

Picture 6.




Using Microsoft Paint, I surgically excised the unwanted parts of my face, added a new forehead, sketched in a little mouth, and added some arms. It occurred to me that upside down, and with half my head removed, I looked exactly like one of my pugs!

Picture 7.




Hypothesis: Disproven. You do need to be talented to be a good artist. I sent my concept to my twin brother, John "Rusty Scupperton" Thornton, who brought the Pug Jim chimera disturbingly to life!

The picture reminded me greatly of a poem most of us read in college, which sounds a powerful cautionary note against the bestial impulse that, quite frankly, is universal in human males:

The Pug Child
WITH APOLOGIES TO JAMES L. DICKEY
Pug owners wild to couple
With anything with soft-curly tails
With mounds of earth mounds
Of pinestraw will keep themselves off
Animals by legends of their own:
In the dog nest dark
And dung of yards, they will
Say I have heard tell

That in a museum in Ambridge, PA
Way back in a corner somewhere
There’s this thing that’s only half
Pug like a worried baby
Pickled in alcohol because
Those things can’t live. his eyes
Are open but you can’t stand to look
I heard from somebody who ...

But this is now almost all
Gone. The boys have taken
Their own true wives in the city,
The pugs are safe in the west hill
Kennel but we who were born there
Still are not sure. Are we,
Because we remember, remembered
In the terrible dust of museums?

Merely with his eyes, the pug-child may

Be saying saying

I am here, in my father’s Dog-gloo.
I who am half of your world, came deeply
To my mother before her bowl
Of Science Diet, where she stood like moonlight
Listening for pussies. It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head
Out of the kibble, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face
Farther into the Kennel Ration, and in a sound
Of sobbing of something stumbling
Away, began, as she must do,
To carry me. I woke, dying,

In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes
Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment
The great dog run world from both sides,
Man and wolves in the round of their need,
And the hill wind stirred in my coat,
My paw and my hand clasped each other,
I ate my one meal
Of Purina Chow, and died
Staring. From dark meat I came straight

To my father’s house, whose dust
Whirls up in the halls for no reason
When no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner,
And, through my immortal waters,
I meet the sun’s flesh eye
To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.
Dead, I am most surely living
In the minds of pug owning boys: I am he who drives
Them like wolves from the sow and hen
And from the chaste bitch in the wind.
They go into woods into bean fields they go
Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,
They groan they wait they suffer
Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

Picture 8.




Chances are that anyone who has continued reading up to this point will enjoy the bejesus out of my wonderful brother's latest movie, itself a tremendous gem of activist art! How I love the good nature and earnest bonhomie/sensibility of this American Baby!

To complete your Easter journey, simply click on here to find out that there are worse monsters afoot in these United States than the odd, short-lived Pug Children who live for a day among us before expiring!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrpQ...V6qahcFfHS-cI= ]]> jim thornton http://forums.usms.org/entry.php?21717-Swimboy-Pictorial